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Last week, we discovered that the out-of-phase life-sucking Devidians — the “blue ghosts” — had followed a comet into the Klingon-Federation neutral zone and were using the humanoids of the Alpha Quadrant as a tasty buffet.

This week, Section 31 operative Franklin Drake ordered the Federation News Service to investigate the Ferengi-run Drozana station. One of Drake’s undercover operatives, posing as a Dabo girl, had triggered an emergency beacon and requested immediate withdrawal. Though dubious about anything to do with Section 31, we are, after all, Starfleet officers first and correspondents second, and must do our duty when called.

The Ferengi who runs the station wasn’t immediately helpful, being somewhat fixated on getting his replicators working. They’d been developing intermittent glitches at about the same time the station lighting started flickering blue. If we could … well, of course we could. We went to the cargo bay to find the problem.

What a tangled mess of fused circuits and melted conduits! Working on non-Federation technology gives you a real appreciation of the virtues of regular maintenance. Once I had the replicators in a reasonable state, I had to reroute some circuits HERE, and connect THIS console to THAT one, but only after I’d switched THIS one on and … back to the replicator system, and it was all somehow working once more.

The Ferengi tried to weasel out of the deal (typical), but eventually showed us to Ze’mara, the undercover operative.

Ze’mara can, apparently, see the Devidians even when they are out of phase. A bit of political intrigue among the Klingon high houses was her news, and the blue ghosts were watching everything, occasionally surrounding a drunk Klingon or other reveler and making them… disappear. She just needed a moment to prepare to leave… in the meantime, we could play some Dabo, perhaps, and wait for her signal.

So we went and played some Dabo. Why not? Running the table was our old friend Leeta, late of Deep Space 9. I guess her husband, Rom, must have gotten a job on Drozana. We spun the Dabo wheel and — nothing. But Leeta screamed Dabo! anyway.

She said that if she’d waited for us to win legit, we’d be there all night. Leeta told us that if we really wanted to get to the bottom of the problems at Drozana station, we’d head to the lower levels; she had an access code for us. But if we wanted to catch Ze’mara, we’d better hurry, because she was about to take off.

We caught up to Ze’mara as she booked passage on a ship off-station. We didn’t need to know the details, but we should tell Franklin Drake that he would continue to get his intel, one way or the other.

Back at the ship, my first officer was full of concern about how we could possibly stop the Devidians whose entry into our phase must be eased by the passage of that “comet”. Perhaps we could stop by the Federation laboratories on Deep Space K-7; there were rumors of a new weapon.

At K-7, a Lieutenant Kalapo confirmed that there was a prototype weapon that proved useless against its intended use against a certain kind of cloaking, but might possibly be modified to prove useful against phase shifted Devidians. He would make those modifications and send the plans to Franklin Drake.

No sooner had we reported back to Drake than he sent us a crate of the new guns, already designed and tested. That was quick! He had some more groundwork to lay, but he told us to stay ready and alert — we had not yet seen the last of the Devidians.

—

Another fairly short mission. This one was entirely solo, which meant we hadn’t needed to make groups and become ready for battle. Even though the description of the mission made it seem like there would be no need for force, you can’t really be sure.

Next week’s episode brings us back to the lower levels of Drozana station, and promises to be a heck of a ground battle. The new gun will come in handy.